Punch (magazine)

Sourced

• I used your soap two years ago; since then I have used no other.
  • Volume lxxxvi, 1884, page 197. Illustration by Harry Furniss.

• (Cartoon True Humility, curate Jones having breakfast at his Bishop's house.)
  Bishop: I'm afraid you've got a bad egg, Mr Jones.
  Jones (apparently trying not to give offence): Oh, no, my Lord, I assure you that parts of it are excellent!
  • By George du Maurier, 9 November 1895.
  • From which comes the expression curate's egg for something with good and bad parts.

• (Cartoon featuring the vicar's wife talking to a rustic old man laid up by an injured foot.)
  Vicar's wife: Now that you can't get about and are not able to read, how do you manage to occupy the time?
  Rustic man: Well, mum, sometimes I sits and thinks and then again I just sits.
  • By Gunning-King, 24 October 1906.
  • Quoted by Nigel Rees in his book Why Do We Say ...?. This is the origin of the saying Sometimes I sits and thinks and sometimes I just sits. Used by Lucy Maud Montgomery in Anne of the Island. And perhaps as Sometimes I just sits as an inscription on a china figurine of a boy on a lavatory.